Self-storage facilities in the US

As self-storage facilities have multiplied, Survivor viewership has declined, a negative correlation of -0.979 that connects America's accumulation problem to its attention problem with the consumer confidence of a chart observing a nation that keeps buying things it cannot store and stops watching the show about surviving without them. The storage unit fills, the remote changes, and both trends measure a culture that has moved on from the concept of doing without.

Storage facilities grew from about 44,000 to over 60,000. Survivor viewership declined from about 20 million to under 6 million per episode as streaming fragmented the broadcast audience. One rises (Americans accumulate more stuff), the other falls (Americans watch less broadcast television). Both measure the same cultural shift: from shared mass experiences (Survivor, 2000s TV) to individualized, on-demand consumption (streaming, self-storage as lifestyle).

Eighteen years of more storage and less Survivor is a portrait of American culture going from communal to individual: the shared television experience gives way to the private streaming queue, and the shared living space gives way to the private storage unit. The tribe has spoken. The unit is rented. The correlation captures both kinds of isolation.